Denyse O’Leary has put up a fascinating post about a cockatoo (a Tanimbar corella, Cacatua goffiniana, like the one pictured above) that can crack locks unassisted, without having to be offered a reward at each step along the way. This raises the interesting question of whether the bird’s behavior can properly be described as intelligent. Here’s a brief excerpt from the report by Sandrine Ceurstemont (3 July 2013) in New Scientist magazine: Alex Kacelnik and colleagues at the University of Oxford set a number of cockatoos a challenge: pick a lock to access a nut visible behind a transparent door. The birds had to remove a pin, followed by a screw and a bolt, before turning a wheel to release Read More ›

“This has to be a joke,” I thought to myself, as I read the Phys.org article on Dr. Eugene McCarthy, the geneticist who believes that human beings originated as a result of hybridization between a pig and an ape. But it wasn’t. The guy is serious, and he is a bona fide geneticist who specializes in the study of hybridization and who has taught at the University of Georgia. In 2006, his Handbook of Avian Hybrids of the World (Oxford University Press, 2006), was published and favorably reviewed. The book provides information on nearly 4,000 distinct types of hybrid crosses among birds and cites more than 5,000 publications. During his years of work as a geneticist, however, Dr. McCarthy had Read More ›

The ID interpretation of No Free Lunch theorems argues that Darwinian processes on average will not do better than chance processes for the emergence of biological complexity. As has been debated at UD, it’s not merely a question of what is possible, but what we should reasonably expect. For example, see: The Law of Large Numbers vs. KeithS, Eigenstate, and my other TSZ critics. The Genetic Entropy hypothesis by creationist John Sanford argues that biological complexity is gradually going out of the human genome and possibly the entire biosphere. I provided cursory analysis that lends credence to both the ID interpretation of No Free Lunch theorems and the Genetic Entropy thesis here: The price of cherry picking for addicted gamblers Read More ›

The ID debate takes place among a relatively small number people on the internet. I guess maybe there are 50 or so regular viewers of UD. Most threads have views around 300 views, which are not all unique. So why is time invested in these debates? Surely the UD and TSZ blogs aren’t reaching and extremely wide audience, and the other blogs and forums are relatively quiet. So why is there so much time spent in debate? I list here Mark Frank’s viewpoint and mine. Readers may offer their reasons. Mark Frank in response to my query wrote: Just noticed this from Sal If its not too personal, and because I want to understand, not condemn, if you believe there Read More ›

This is a follow up to : Hitler and the Nazi Darwinian Worldview UD’s purpose is serving the ID community. Even if I may not necessarily agree with the Darwinists, there are times things they say merit our attention and consideration. It is fair to say Darwinism inspires a lot of bad science as well as twisted morality. But I have to offer cautions if one wants to play the eugenics or genocide card because if you’re a Jew or Christian, if you play these cards, it can be thrown right back at you because of the abundant and zealous genocide practiced by God’s people in the Old Testament. In that sense, Old Testament “creationists” were also advocates of genocide Read More ›

The famous co-author of the book The Genesis Flood has recently written the book: Jesus Christ Our Intelligent Designer: An Evaluation of the Intelligent Design Movement. To my knowledge, the Discovery Institute nor any high ranking ID proponent has had anything to say about this book, written by a very prominent creationist. From Amazon: Is Intelligent Design the Christian’s answer to evolutionists and their naturalistic explanations for origins, or is it an unacceptable compromise that sacrifices the true Creator for an undefined designer? Is it a powerful apologetic for the biblical faith or a watered-down version of creation that intentionally leaves out the gospel of Christ? Renowned theologian John Whitcomb addresses these issues in a succinct and careful analysis of Read More ›

I’m surprised this book wasn’t mentioned at UD earlier. Hitler and the Nazi Darwinian worldview This book takes a fresh look at Germany’s most influential Nazi leaders, examining their backgrounds, education and convictions. It provides compelling evidence that the rising influence of Darwinism, eugenics and race theory in early-twentieth century society set the foundation for the Nazi pursuit of engineering a German “master race”-and exterminating European Jews, Gypsies, Blacks, most Slavs and the Christian religion in the ensuing madness of the Holocaust of World War II. The effect of social Darwinism, eugenics and anti-Semitism, and their relative acceptance in the scientific and medical communities of Germany and many other countries worldwide, opened the door to mass murder, medical experimentation and Read More ›

With due respect to our UK colleagues, appropriate for a day celebrating the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, the author of the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson, wrote elsewhere: “I hold (without appeal to revelation) that when we take a view of the Universe, in its parts general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to perceive and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and indefinite power in every atom of its composition. and the words of the Declaration would probably cause Richard Dawkins to have a fit: When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and Read More ›

Shannon’s legendary paper: Mathematical Theory of Communication unwittingly lends support to the philosophical notion that perfect designs in one dimension must of necessity have imperfection in other dimensions. We intuitively understand that we communicate much better with someone in a quiet room versus a noisy room. But Shannon’s genius was that he quantified this notion by relating maximum data transmission rate to the signal-to-noise ratio. The result of the paper was the now famous Noisy channel coding theorem. To make his argument, he defined measures of information relevant to communication, the famous notion of “bit”. The notion of “bit” plays a central role in ID theories, but ironically, the notion of “bit” wasn’t the focus of Shannon’s legendary paper! How Read More ›

[This is a follow on to a conversation began by RDFish/Aiguy which was crossposted at UD and TSZ: here and here] Perhaps, however, one just really does not want to call intelligent design a scientific theory. Perhaps one prefers the designation “quasi-scientific historical speculation with strong metaphysical overtones.” Fine. Call it what you will, provided the same appellation is applied to other forms of inquiry that have the same methodological and logical character and limitations. In particular, make sure both design and descent are called “quasi-scientific historical speculation with strong metaphysical overtones.” This may seem all very pointless, but that in a way is just the point. As Laudan has argued, the question whether a theory is scientific is really Read More ›